


How Life Began (And Why It Can't Rest)

by techieturnover



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 07:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1735424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/techieturnover/pseuds/techieturnover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he thinks back - (after he's regained the ability to remember and the focus of mind to analyze) - he isn't surprised at all in how life turned out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Life Began (And Why It Can't Rest)

Bucky Barnes first met Steve Rogers in a sandlot when he was eight. Steve was in the sand, grit kicked in his face for his efforts as he stood again only to be shoved down harder. But every time he got pushed down he'd get back up, smile through the sand and blood like he knew something the other kid didn't and he was about to win this thing altogether, egging this idiot to take another swing like he had a chance. Bucky had come away from that one not as unscathed as he would eventually - like Steve's resilience, his wits in a fight had to be honed and he'd yet to find anything that made him want to be tough. Naturally he was something of a troublemaker as a younger child; not in the cruel way that the bullies who picked on Steve were, but he always had too much energy and not enough direction. He was always moving and always, always searching. Like there was this thing inside of him that if he moved fast enough he could catch it but just as he was about to wrap his fingers around it the thing would change direction, zagging so sharply it seemed like the earth's axis had tilted a little bit and he was running sideways.

When he pulled Steve up after that first fight, helped him brush off only to have his hand batted away with a rough 'I had him on the ropes,' as he stares incredulously into steel blue eyes that have no place on a boy that tiny, it is the first time the chaos inside him is thrown off-balance enough to be still. The thing - the thing Bucky is always trying to chase - zigs straight into Steven Grant Rogers and when the little guy doesn't so much as blink it hangs in the air just long enough for Bucky to get it back in his sights.

He doesn't know it at the time, but that stillness will become a drug to James Buchanan Barnes, soon renamed 'Bucky' because a later fight will knock his two front teeth loose and they'll wiggle for a month before they finally come out and his adult teeth slowly replace them. He'll make Steve laugh by shoving them out between his lips to distract him from his mother's illness, and the nickname sticks. He never liked James anyway. Thinks it sounded like the name of someone who got stuck working in a factory all his life or chained behind an editor's desk and Bucky always wanted to be an adventurer like Huckleberry Finn. He likes Steve though. Steve's name means 'One who surrounds or encompasses,' and Bucky thinks he couldn't have chosen a more fitting name if he'd had a thousand years. Steve surrounds Bucky. Encompasses his life. Contains it and controls the energy in him like the banks of a river direct the flow of the water between them. 

It's an asset in their earlier life. Bucky follows Steve like a dog, loyal and loving and so goddamn happy just to be his friend because Steve is the most amazing person Bucky has ever known. He challenges Bucky and is one of the few guys who can keep up with the thirst for everything Bucky has. For every book Bucky reads about economics and mathematics and physics Steve is there talking about social justice and equality and making analogies between art and math that make Bucky hurt on the inside for how much he loves hearing Steve talk. He sometimes thinks he could live his entire life just talking to Steve and they'd never get bored. Sometimes, on the days when it's too hot to do anything even remotely resembling moving, Bucky will sprawl on their bed and let Steve have the window sill for the air flow and they'll talk about everything. The latest Dodger's game. Darlene next door who Bucky's been sweet on but who he knows Steve fancies. Steve will ask when Rebecca might visit again, tell Bucky about the new framing gallery that's opening up on Fulton and how Steve thinks he might be able to get a job there. 

On the hottest days, they talk about Steve's mom. Bucky sometimes forgets how deeply Steve hurts except on these days. Can't fathom the kind of strength Steve possesses in that tiny frame of his. How sometimes it seems Steve can only talk about the things he really feels when the temperature outside is more oppressive than his sense of self-restraint.

Steve doesn't get the job at the new gallery but the manager talks him into an art class being held nearby. They aren't well off enough that they can really afford it but Steve charms the teacher with his enthusiasm and talent for realism, for capturing the absurdness of life in charcoal on paper. She lets them sneak in to sit in the back and stays late so that she and Steve can talk about his latest piece, or some artist in Paris who's created a fantastic statement with their latest painting. It's here the war finds them. Here that Bucky's life becomes irreversibly changed.

Bucky is drafted before he can enlist; the number he was given at the draft office called out over the radio and just like that he and thousands of other boys have a new purpose in life. Steve is rejected when he tries to enlist. Bucky gets his orders, Steve is rejected again. And again. Bucky wonders if maybe Steve thought they'd go over together like they do everything else because there’s an anger in his best friend at being inadequate that is unnatural in a man who loves as much as Steve does. It throws Bucky’s world off kilter, that anger and disappointment and sadness. He decides then he has to do something to fix that. It’s what he does, the job he’s been assigned. He tries to make Steve happy by fixing the injustices of the world that weigh so heavily upon his friend's shoulders, like a war that is taking hundreds of thousands of lives but has now also taken his best friend from him. Bucky sometimes thinks maybe that's why he never grew any taller than a schoolboy, all that weight on his shoulders. 

It causes a rift between them. Steve insists that he can help, that he should be fighting for his country, fighting against the bullies, just like every other guy in the country but Bucky is scared. So fucking scared that something will happen to Steve because he still remembers what it was like before he had steel-blue to ground him. He's afraid what he might do if that's ripped from him before his eyes. He leaves for the first time with Steve's disappointment fresh from another rejection on his mind and begs him to just stay put. He'll fight enough for the both of them. He knows it doesn't make Steve feel any better.

In bootcamp his commanding officer takes a shine to Bucky. When it's discovered he can already speak two languages besides English enough to hold a conversation they accelerate his training. He's promoted again a month before Pearl Harbor. They ship out to England in the first part of 1942, where his commanding officer thinks he should learn how to shoot something other than a standard army rifle and Bucky finds the first thing besides Steve for which he can sit still. He finds in the training an ability to focus that until now has been reserved for Steve alone. It's all really just mathematics and physics, this sniper business. Find the target, triangulate your shot, wait for the right moment, pull the trigger. There’s an art in it too, finding your perfect cover, blending in. He thinks of Steve. He isn't sure how he's going to react when it's a human he has to shoot, is nervous he won't be able to do this and watch blood spurt from a wound he caused. But he thinks of Steve again - of why he's here, doing this - and pulls the trigger.

When they finally ship out onto the front lines, it turns out not to be as hard as he thought it might be.

\---

James Barnes loses track of how long he is at war. The days blur into death and danger and mud but also camaraderie and worry and missing Steve. Things move fast and they are dirty and Bucky thinks maybe he was born for this because the war is as chaotic as it is inside his own heart. His own distortion is channeled into focusing on five things at once and he proves singularly talented at knowing where the enemy will come from and sending out a few bullets as a welcoming party. Which is why, when an unfamiliar tank starts disintegrating - _disintegrating jesus christ there's not even dust_ \- enemy soldiers, Bucky feels the sickening twist again and hates it. He screams too late for his men to run, and it's only the beginning of the worst nightmare Bucky Barnes has ever had.

\---

He gets sick. Years of worrying over Steve's health, and he's the one who going to die because he's sick. Everyone knows what happens to the prisoners who can't work at building the tanks that Bucky still has nightmares about. The tanks never even fired at them, but he still looks down the barrel of the huge machine every day and has to swallow a couple of times before he can inhale without vomiting. He thinks he'll remembers the burning for the rest of his life. 

He gets sick and they take him to a back laboratory, but he still breaks the jaw of the guy who drags him in. If they're gonna experiment on him, he's damn well not gonna go quietly no matter how much his lungs burn and squeeze at the exertion. 

They torture him forever. Electric shock and _State your name and rank_ they pump something in him that makes his veins feel like fire, then it’s more electricity. The chaos that's inside his head amplifies, explodes until he's begging _please stop_ and it feels like they're electrocuting his brain and he's gonna die. He wants to die. Hopes Steve is safe. Who's Steve...? He can't remember how to speak, soon, only how to plead. Barely knows his name. Knows his name? His rank. Who is he? James Bucha- more pain, more of that white lightning that makes his jaw ache and his body tighten until every ligament feels over-taut. Then the burning starts again and he feels like he's maybe already dead and in hell. His name doesn't matter if he's dead so he stops saying it when they're around.

Even when they are not with him, the voices of the monsters experimenting on him linger in his head, amplifying the noise and he screams (whispers) his name over and over again but he doesn't know why. He can't remember anything except pain, doesn't register who he is anymore, feels like he's always been pain. Feels like he's always been falling. 

If he could remember how to cry, if he could feel enough to cry, he probably would have. He hears something about a phase two. About how the subject is ready. He doesn't remember realizing they were talking about him. He was an observer, locked behind a wall of pain and chaos and so lost and his body feels like it's not his own. That's when everything erupts and silences at once. There is a fervor and suddenly he is alone. He doesn't realize fully that he is alone, just that his pain has decreased enough that he knows he has to start saying...his name...? again. He is supposed to say his name. He thinks. Maybe. 

"Bucky-!"

....................

Bucky Barnes opens his eyes and the arms now clasping his are like a jolt to his system, warmth and solid where before only the pain and noise had been. He doesn't...know this person..he

looks up and 

Jesus Christ.

Steve.

“Steve?” 

_Steve._

Taller, broader and looking like a goddamn work of art, but the weight in his soul tells Bucky this is his Steve. The rush of knowledge back into his brain has him somewhat overwhelmed, but the flashes of Brooklyn and home and _Steve_ all tell him he is safe now. It's a strange thought because he has never before connected Steve with safety but he does now, and clings to the taller -"I thought you were smaller"- man as he's hauled out of a room he never looks back to and cannot recall the details of when asked. 

He's in shock, he realizes, but Steve's soft banter grounds him, like lead shoes, like the most comforting solid sound he's ever heard. When Steve tells him to leave without him his voice sounds almost foreign as it screams along with every fiber of him _NOT WITHOUT YOU._ He spends the entire walk back to bace at Steve's elbow, the most menacing guarddog anyone has ever seen. His buddies from the trenches look at him strangely, like they don't recognize some part of him that is here now that wasn't when he went into that torture chamber. He _feels_ darker, that's for certain. James Barnes went into the war to fight for his friend, stayed because he proved unnaturally good at it and because he had no choice. But now? He looks at Steve, feels his heart break because he knows this war could break him. And he feels an angry purpose settle in his bones. Steve looks back at him and smiles - goddamn smiles like Bucky is his sun and stars and Bucky vows that he will do whatever it takes to protect this man. Maybe renews the vow, but knows exactly what it is he's promising this time. He grips the gun in his hands a little tighter. If Steve is gonna be his sun and the symbol of Good in this war, he's gonna need someone willing to cast the shadows. 

The next two years are, alternatively, the best and worst Bucky will ever remember. Steve finds his own purpose in leading, like Bucky had always known he would. He is a brilliant strategist, perhaps not as experienced as Bucky, but his eye for detail and memory surpass Bucky's tenfold. He leads their group of Commandos without ever losing a single man, and his success makes Bucky want to fucking explode with how proud he is. Being with this group is healing for Bucky too. They're friendly and loyal and so tight with each other there's little room for the dark thoughts that sometimes wake him up at night. They all have their terrors. Morita knows his family is being held prisoner by the very country he is fighting for; Dugan for all his joviality suffers with every life he takes. Bucky thinks he and Steve might have some of the same blood running through their veins in that sense. Falsworth can no longer stand to be near water after the incident with the Leviathan. Gabe deals with every snide comment from a fellow soldier with a tight smile and the air of someone who cares much less than he actually does. The others make sure the offender knows there's no place for that kind of shit in their ranks, but it doesn't stop Gabe's laughter becoming a little less bright each time. They all carry pieces of this war around with them but Bucky also carries that room. The room that he doesn't talk about. The one that wakes him up in the middle of the night with the stench of fear rolling off him and his stomach in knots as he tries to shake from his head the noise that tells him to kill. 

Steve sleeps beside him and it helps. The sure, solid weight of his friend's arm over his side, the unnatural heat from Steve's new body warming him and slowing down his panic like those hot summer nights in Brooklyn. But he is changed, irreparably. 

When he falls from the train in the winter of 1944, his scream is the last sound he will remember being able to discern from the scrambled mess between his ears, until he meets a man on a bridge nearly 70 years later. 

\--------

And that's where it all goes sour. Because after he's brought back from being a soldier, an assassin, a weapon to be used and put away, he realizes after only a day that Steve's direction would swallow him whole. And he'd go willingly. Had gone willingly for two years, albeit unbeknownst to either of them. But he can't do that now. Maybe the reckless and fearless - cocky - boy who'd gone to war had needed that direction in his life and the damaged tortured experiment had sought it out. But the Winter Soldier has no other purpose than to serve it, and Bucky realizes that he would destroy them both if he stayed now - the chaos that is eternally roiling beneath his skin would erupt one day under the (willing) subjugation Steve's steadiness brings to the Winter Soldier. He won't admit even to himself he's afraid Bucky is already gone but he will say outloud that he needs to find out for himself who Bucky was away from Steve Rogers. 

So he leaves. And for a week he feels so directionless he rarely knows which way is up, the Soldier has no orders and Bucky Barnes has no Steve Rogers and they're both free falling, spinning their arms and hoping to learn how to control the vertigo. It happens suddenly one night as he's traveling - running, crawling, falling, pinwheeling - through the Grand Canyon. He looks across a vast open space with the stars standing silent vigils and the warm air hanging around him like a heavy blanket. He stills, out of breath but not breathing; just still. He stands in the exact same spot all night. He breathes as silently as possible and revels in the quietness, the vast emptiness just feet from where he stands. He feels righted, like he can stand on his feet and not lean with the axis of a spinning planet. 

It takes him two more weeks and when he reaches out to the Avengers again it is not Steve but Bruce he contacts. Bruce seems to understand the chaos in his bones and Bucky can feel that maybe there's something of the same entropy in him that there is in Bucky. He stays with Bruce for three days but does not sleep. Sleep means nightmares. Bruce teaches him how to put himself into a meditative trance that is something like the cryo chamber but warmer. It is comforting. 

When he finally returns to Steve it's like coming home but not. They lock eyes first and Bucky feels the same stillness wash over him he had that first time they met, but it is less all encompassing and more like a set of hands on his shoulders. He hugs Steve hard and feels his feet solidly on the ground for the first time in maybe seventy years (even though it seems like it should have only been a month ago they were fighting with the Commandos.)

He kisses Steve and for the first time discovers what it's like to be the steady one while someone else is reeling. He decides he likes that feeling, and Steve kisses him back like maybe he's been looking for someone to teach him how to be a little bit more chaotic.

\--

Now he is steady in his own right, stands on his own feet. He still trips every once in a while, the chaos still in the back of his mind with the Soldier's training and the Broken Experiment’s noise and he treads the line between loving Steve and letting Steve rule his life. Treads the line between doing what he can to right the wrongs he was forced to commit, and letting his wrongs consume him. It's a line between control and entropy he walks, but he knows he's got someone to steady him if he stumbles.


End file.
